A Sudden Storm Brings New York City to Its Knees

A tornado with winds of up to 135 miles an hour took roofs off in Brooklyn.Credit
Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency

A brief but fierce storm drenched the New York region just before the morning rush yesterday, paralyzing the transit system, flooding major thoroughfares, cutting off electricity to thousands of homes and causing confusion that lingered through a humid, sweaty day.

The storm, which sent water gushing into subway tunnels and swirling over commuter railroad tracks, also unleashed a tornado that brushed Staten Island, then whipped southwestern Brooklyn with winds of up to 135 miles an hour.

That was perhaps the most ominous part of a deluge that left people wondering if they were waking up to a major catastrophe, with streets blocked by the twisted wreckage of cars with broken-out windows that had been battered by debris.

The deluge overwhelmed storm sewers, and one woman was killed after her car became stuck in a flooded underpass on Staten Island. The police said another car struck hers, starting a fire that burned her so badly that her body could not be immediately identified.

But the biggest disruption struck the city’s subway system, where most lines were shut down during the morning rush when the water knocked out signals, stranding or delaying millions of riders. Though the Metropolitan Transportation Authority restored most of them during the day, a half-dozen were still out of commission during the evening rush hour and the agency said some problems could last into today.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to review how the transit system had failed after a sudden downpour for the third time in seven months. At a separate news briefing, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg referred to “chaos with the subway system,” but refrained from judging the agency’s performance.

“We are very much tied to mass transit, which is a system that is obviously vulnerable to natural events,” the mayor said. The authority has pumps to drain the tracks, he said, but with “very heavy rain, you can only design it to take away so much.”

For New Yorkers, whether they were tied to the subways or not, the rain served as a short and violent prelude to a day of frustration. It was a day of poor communication, of uncertainty about how to get to work and of anger at what 1.7 inches of rain — the amount that fell in Central Park in one hour, between 6 and 7 a.m. — could do to disrupt the city’s daily routines.

The day began with already-soggy commuters trudging to the subway, only to discover there was no subway. They trudged to bus stops and tried to crowd onto buses any way they could, through the front door or the back door. Some settled for the bus after that. Or the bus after that. Or the bus after that. As the day went on, crowds and unusually long lines persisted at some bus stops in Manhattan and Queens.

Some commuters described spats — not fistfights, really, but almost — as they tried to jam into already jammed buses or, on the few subway lines that were running, into sardine-density cars.

“I waited for five trains,” said Matthew A. Brown, an architect who usually catches the F train at the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. “You couldn’t get on. There were little tiffs, like, ‘Hey, buddy, there’s no room.’ I decided not to fight it.”

As the morning wore on, traffic on many Manhattan streets remained at rush-period density, as some frustrated commuters who could not use mass transit turned to the roads. At noon, one driver spent just under an hour going from 79th Street and Riverside Drive to Times Square.

In the anger of the moment — a moment that seemed to last all day for some — they remembered a line often attributed to the humorist Robert Benchley in a cable from Venice: “Streets filled with water — please advise.” But they also complained that there was no advice. More than three hours after the storm surged across the area, the clerks at the Northern Boulevard station in Woodside, Queens were standing on the street. They said they had no idea when service would resume.

Rick Gee of Farmingdale, N.Y., stared at the sign. His trip on the Long Island Rail Road had taken three hours — usually it takes one — and he still had to complete the last leg of his commute to his job as a porter at an apartment house at 56th Street and Lexington Avenue. And usually he can count on the subway.

“I guess I’ll walk,” he announced, sounding forlorn.

Other commuters seemed surprised at how much the storm seemed to have upset the daily rhythms and rituals. And recovering proved difficult. As late as 9:55 a.m., transit officials were warning that the subway system would not be back until noon at the earliest.

For much of the morning, New York City Transit’s press information office had only one employee on duty; the others were trying to get in.

Charles Seaton, a spokesman for the agency, said at 10:35 a.m. that he had just reached the office. His trip took three hours.

By 10 p.m. most service was restored, with one exception: the F train was suspended in Queens between the 71st Street-Continental Avenue station in Forest Hills and the end of the line, the 179th Street station in Jamaica. The prospect for service there this morning was unclear.

The Long Island Rail Road said it had canceled 15 trains for the evening rush. The L.I.R.R. said delays in the morning averaged 30 minutes on trains through Mineola because of flooding near the station. No Port Washington branch trains ran from 7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. because water submerged the third rail in Bayside.

New Jersey Transit said most of its lines were delayed 15 to 20 minutes in the morning, but were back on schedule by midday.

Forecasters said the storm was unusual for the amount of rain that fell in just an hour, between 6 and 7 a.m. “This is something you don’t typically see,” said John Murray of the National Weather Service. The storm began a few hours earlier. In all, the National Weather Service recorded 2.5 inches in Central Park.

The totals at airports in the area were higher. Kennedy International Airport reported 3.47 inches. Newark Liberty Airport reported 3.12 inches, breaking a record of 1.32 inches that had stood since 1959. The storm also set a record at La Guardia Airport, with 2.54 inches, and at Long Island Islip MacArthur Airport, with 0.46 inches.

The storm was “definitely one of the stronger ones we’ve seen,” said John Christantello, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Upton, N.Y., on Long Island, because the conditions that make for powerful storms came together — a churning system of thunderstorms that rolled east from western Pennsylvania and upstate New York, and the sticky air that had hung over the New York area for the last few days.

Jeff Warner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, said that when that kind of storm system collides with that kind of moist air, “the potential for rain really goes up.”

According to Consolidated Edison, the storm toppled electric lines in parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island. A Con Ed spokesman said that as many as 4,000 customers lost power.

Then there was the tornado. After sending meteorologists to look through debris for telltale signs of circular wind patterns, the National Weather Service concluded that that was what had hopscotched through Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, with winds of 111 to 135 miles an hour, after first touching down on Staten Island, where damage was largely limited to trees.

In the tornado’s wake, 20 buildings had to be evacuated, leaving 32 families without shelter, the city’s Buildings Department said. Another 50 buildings were damaged.

Correction: August 11, 2007

An article on Thursday about a storm that drenched the New York region, paralyzing the transit system, referred incorrectly in some copies to delays on morning Long Island Rail Road trains through Mineola, and misstated the total amount of rainfall recorded by the National Weather Service in Central Park. The delays averaged 30 minutes, not an hour, and the rainfall totaled 2.5 inches, not 2.8.